Dominion Genesis by Jonathan D Beer

Author:Jonathan D Beer
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Science fiction: space opera (FLS)
Publisher: Black Library
Published: 2024-08-05T00:00:00+00:00

Three

Twenty-nine days after fleeing the company of its peers, the Peregrinus reached its destination. It burst from the empyrean in the manner of a deep-water mammal breaching the surface of a violent sea.

It had been another difficult passage. There were no easy passages in this new, bleak millennium. The Peregrinus had fought its way through storm-wracked tides, often struggling to maintain Geller field integrity, much less make headway towards their goal. At the request of their Navigator, Sherax had twice ordered translation back to the void to effect repairs and give the mutant a few hours of respite.

These interludes had been necessary for the entire crew. The ship had been plagued by the warp for the entire voyage, as the membrane that separated the Peregrinus from the Inexplicable Realm had frayed. Serfs were struck by waking nightmares, causing continual outbursts of violent despair. Acolytes and adepts found their experiments corrupted by data-gheists. Tempered iron shattered beneath fabricators’ hammer blows. Servitors, typically resilient to empyric ephemera, conjured contradictory instructions from the depths of their lobotomised minds, or else ceased to function altogether.

Such were the trials to be endured by those who sought to travel between the stars.

As the wound in space clenched shut and the ship clothed itself in reality once again, all aboard permitted themselves an expression of relief.

‘Void shields to maximum. Prime all weapons.’

Sherax’s order rang out across the ship. There could be no pause, no interval in which its labouring thralls could stop and give thanks to the Omnissiah for their survival. Instead, the goads of their overseers bit deep, and scourged flesh hurried to feed more fuel to toiling reactors and rouse gun batteries and lance coils to waking.

The command deck was appropriately silent, though gripped by the same purposeful activity that seized the ship. During the passage Yuel had taken to occupying a position to one side of Sherax’s command throne. The throne itself had been empty, though his former protégé had taken her place for the final hours of empyric transit, and sat now in close communion with the ship.

‘Proximity threat detection.’ Sherax’s orders clicked over the vox.

A bent-backed figure reported instantly from the far side of the chamber. ‘No readings, ductrix.’

‘Long-range auspex.’

A longer delay. ‘Nothing, ductrix.’

Yuel sensed a degree of tension ease from the noosphere. The nature of their destination had not been openly stated by Sherax, but the crew had learnt of it nonetheless. Interdictus absolutus was not a prohibition that was applied without cause, nor was it lightly broken. The communion had been a turbulent and fractious mindscape in the past weeks. Disquiet stalked the ship, expressed in a thousand micro-gestures and hesitant actions.

Once again, Yuel reflected on the error Sherax had committed by cutting herself off from her crew.

‘Very well,’ the ductrix replied. ‘Show me the system.’

A hololithic projector hummed into life. The deck was lit by shades of laser blue as the plinth threw a tri-d image of the stellar system into the air below the vox-mistress’ cradle. The hololith

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